'What Would It Take To Make You See That I'm Alive...'

Picture this...

Nowhere. 1994. A small town high school. A girl. A bushy 'fro much like that of Bozo. A young man. A bowl cut. The boy next door. A crush develops. As this, their freshman year progresses, the boy puts himself forward as a rather good athelte. The boy is as nice as can be. Your all-american boy next door. Smiles at everyone, never picks on the geeks (but hardly notices them either). As the boys social status climbs with each athletic acheivement, the girl sinks lower into social outcastism (yes, that is a word. I can be found on page 52 of the Juicy dictionary).

Flash forward 4 years. The boy graduates at the top of his game(s). In addition to being a skilled skiier, he is also quite the runner. The girl, graduates.

Flash forward another 4 years. The boy graduates college with quite a list of national awards under his belt. The girl quit college 2 years ago, and works full time to pay her bills.

Flash forward 2 years. He is off to Italy. He is a member of the US Olympic team. The pride of a small town. The girl, well, works full time to pay her bills.

At first, I was bitter. I seem to be the least ambitious person that graduated that year. I mean, people I graduated with a college coaches, pro athletes, doctors, teachers, lawyers. I am inches away from unemployment.

Then as his departure for Torino became closer, I started to get excited. He was going to represent our little town, against the world. How cool is that?

My employer ran a promotion based on selling Visa cards, in that promotion, I won a duffel bag. The cool thing about this completely average bag is that it is one of the bags that was issued to the athletes.

The week of the opening ceremonies it hits me...I was ignored for 4 years by an Olpmic athlete. How cool is that? How many of you can say that?

This is the only time my social outcastism (still a word, and still something I am trying to recover from), has ever been something I thought was cool.